Centar Zhupa

Centar Župa

Centar Župa is a village situated near the city of Debar and populated mainly by Turks. According to the 2002 census, 80 percent of the 6299 inhabitants of the municipality are reported as Turks. In the 1960s much of the population left the villages to work in other parts of Yugoslavia or in West European countries, especially to Italy, Switzerland and Germany. These families come to their home towns only once a year, mostly during the summer holidays.

The village was populated by Torbeshi and some of them claim that they are Turks. From my talks with the locals it seemed that the majority of the locals view themselves as Turks. Once our Turkish interlocutors left, our Albanian guide promptly denied their Turkish identity claiming that they are in fact Macedonians with a turn-cloak mentality.
Slađan, M.A. Student U Belgrade

After talking to the other members of our fild trip it seemed like everybody had heard diffrent stories about the minority and the spoken language, that was very interesting in hindsight.
Megan, B.A. Student HU Berlin